China Meiguo

Last week, Lingnan University hosted a Mass Dance competition with all 8 Hong Kong universities sending dance teams. Since I'm living on campus, I couldn't avoid the event since it drew a large crowd. Now, don't be mistaken - I'm not talking about any type of traditional Chinese dance - this was Hong Kong hip-hop dance style. It was admittedly quite entertaining and obviously the dance teams put a lot of effort into their performances since they were all very well-rehearsed. While I have no problem with Chinese students dancing to hip-hop or any other music they want to, I found it slightly ironic that there wasn't anything the slightest bit Chinese in this entire performance which included lots of music, dance and costumes.

Anyway, this made me wonder where Chinese culture has gone. With 5000 years of musical history, is there not one Chinese rap song that could have been included in this performance. So I did what any inquisitive individual would do in this modern day and age - I googled. There is of course Jin, a Chinese-American rapper who's had at least some degree of commercial success who's had some degree of commercial success. But I didn't find much so I went to a deeper research source - Youtube. Not too much there either, but I did find MC HotDog ( 姚中仁), a Taiwanese rapper who (based on my comprehensive Internet research) seems to be the closest thing China has to a rap star. So as they say in rapspeak- Yo! - check it:


Although I felt a little bit old watching all these young, energetic college students bustin' their moves (can you say that anymore?) to all the modern hippity hoppiest tunes, I felt better when the event ended with a dance to Earth Wind and Fire's hit Boogie Wonderland which goes back to my early youth.

I haven't seen it yet, but "Lust Caution" (色戒 - Sie Jie), the latest film directed by 3-time Oscar winner Ang Lee, has become very popular in China, especially here at Lingnan University since the story features Lingnan students who plot to assassinate a Chinese officer collaborating with the Japanese during Japan's WWII occupation of parts of China. The film apparently features some steamy sex scenes which China's morality protectors at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) found to be too explicit for Chinese audiences. As a result, a censored version is being shown in Chinese movie theaters (although I'm not sure if the uncensored version is allowed here in Hong Kong since it has its own spearate censorship laws).

Anyway, a few days ago a student at China University of Politics and Law, Dong Yanbin (董彦斌), sued the SARFT claiming that the censored version of the film (which cut 7 minutes of sexual oriented scenes) infringed his consumer rights to information and fair trade (see this article about the lawsuit). Apparently he's doing this to make a point rather than for money since his suit only requests 500 yuan (about U.S. $67)for emotional damages, as well as an apology and making the uncensored version of the film available to adult viewers.

Unlike the United States, China does not have a movie rating system. The SARFT decides what films are allowed to be shown in theaters and has the authority to censor films, as it did by ordering director Ang Lee to edit scenes found objectionable. Although Lee agreed to edit the film for Chinese theater exhibition, he claims that the sex scenes are a crucial part of the story rather than merely gratuitous. Lee says the relationship between the male character (played by Tony Leung) and the female character (played by Chinese newcomer Wei, Tang) "is like occupying and being occupied, prey and predator, under the backdrop of China being occupied by Japan" and "the irony is that you don't know who the occupier is, the man or the woman." In the U.S., you can see the unedited version, but its rated NC-17.

Reportedly, the court will not hear the case unless Dong provides an uncut version as evidence. If you like irony, you'll appreciate that the uncut version is illegal in China. Here's a promotional trailer for the movie.

Last night I got to experience Hong Kong style barbeque. While Americans love to barbeque as much as anyone, Hong Kong people have a slightly different style. They have large open areas, often in parks, where you pay a fee which gives you access to a barbeque grill and all the food you can cook and eat. Each person gets a two-pronged fork and you load up each prong with food of your choice then grill away.

You go up to a counter where all the food is stored and take your pick, from a variety including hot dogs, sausages, chicken wings, beef, pork, chicken, sardines, fishballs, meatballs. There are even some non-meat items available such as sweet potatoes, corn, eggplant and bread. Anyway, in addition to eating, its a good way to socialize while sitting around the BBQ cooking your food.

I went with some of my friends from the Toastmasters group at Lingnan. Needless to say, a good time was had by all and a lot of food was consumed.

I found an article, Hollywood Tries to Curb China's Movie Piracy, about an effort by 2 of the major movie studios to offer low-priced DVDs legally in China. While creating a legitimate market is crucial, it will be very difficult to compete pricewise with pirate DVD sellers who have next to none of the costs that legitimate film companies have to incur.

The article also mentions that "film piracy in China is believed to have cost American studios US $244 million and Chinese studios US $2.4 billion in lost potential box office revenues in China in 2005." While these figures are merely estimates, if they're anywhere remotely close to accurate, it does show that the biggest loser is the Chinese film industry rather than Hollywood which I think is believable since most Chinese people prefer Chinese movies due, among other things, to the language difference.

Hong Kong is China'a psuedo-equivalent to the USA's Hollywood and one of the moviemaking capital of the world. Unlike other cinema genres, Hong Kong's action-themed movies were also able to achieve popularity in the West and stars such as Jackie Chan have found worldwide celebrity status as a result.

Next summer, the Olympic Games will be held in Beijing and China is understandably very proud and excited to be the host country. This sense of national pride is reflected in a news article I saw today which says that about 3500 Chinese kids have been given the Chinese name for Olympic - "Aoyun" which I think looks like this in simplified Chinese characters - 奥林匹克 (although I could be wrong).

Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen recently returned to Nashville from a 9-day trip to China with about 100 Nashville business leaders to promote trade between China and Tennessee. On his flight home, Bredesen wrote an article for The Tennessean, Nashville's main daily newspaper, to tell Tennesseans about some of his opinions of China.

"First, an insight about America: The Chinese are willing to do big things; we need to rediscover that audacity here at home. I've felt for a long time that we confine ourselves far too much to frittering around the edges of opportunities — in infrastructure, in transportation, in health care. This trip has crystallized this feeling. Hong Kong has 7 million people, a little larger than Tennessee; I flew out of a new Hong Kong airport this morning that cost $8 billion to construct. Can you even imagine an $8 billion public infrastructure project in Tennessee? With even bigger ones on the drawing boards?"

I've had the same type of observations during my experiences in China. The Chinese have probably become the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. They're willing to take chances and make major investments in projects they believe are worthwhile even though substantial risks are often involved. Americans, on the other hand, seem to have become complacent and sometimes even lazy, willing to blindly rely on the mantra that the United States is (and always will be) the most economically powerful nation in the world. While the United States certainly is still the world's biggest economy, China is gaining rapidly and its annual growth is about 3 times that of the U.S. China takes education seriously and is making an concerted effort to provide better educational opportunities while the quality of the American education system is stagnating if not declining. While I don't think its productive to view China/U.S. relations as an economic race or a competitition to see who can be best, I do think that the U.S. needs to get back to what made it such a successful country - motivation, serious work ethic, serious commitment to education, pride, innovation, etc.

"Second, China is enormous; 1.3 billion people is a quarter of the world. The refrain repeated over and over by our Tennesseans: "You just have to see it to believe it." There are cities in China you've never heard of that are bigger than any city in the U.S. And with that size, there is an astonishing amount of money in China. Shanghai defies description. A lot of what is going on right now has to be a dot-com-like bubble — but it's the underlying wealth to buy these assets that is the real story, and that wealth is definitely there and growing exponentially. China is having its coming-out party."

The enormity of China is one of the first things that hits you when you visit China, especially if you have the opportunity to travel around a bit. China and the United States are about the same size in terms of land mass. However, China has 1.3 billion population compared to The United States' 300 million (world population statistics) and there are many more big, highly populated cities in China than in the U.S. (world's most populated cities) The pace of growth in China is staggering with huge construction projects are going on all over in major cities.

"Third, the political system in China is unique and defies labels. It's not the gray communism that I knew in the 1970s in Eastern Europe; it's not Western-style capitalism either. My best one sentence description would be, "A one-party capitalist country with no Bill of Rights."

I agree with Bredesen that China's political system is unique and defies labels, but I don't totally go along with his description of China as a "one party system with no Bill of Rights." China is technically a one-party system. The Communist Party (CPC) is the sole party in China and, as a totalitarian form of government, clearly exercises a great deal of control over the country's affairs. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the CCP) always acts as one cohesive political party. From what I've been told by some Chinese colleagues, the CCP is somewhat divided into liberal and conservative factions. Also, while China does not have a Bill of Rights like the United States, it has become increasingly (albeit slowly) more inclined to recognize and protect human rights. China has joined various international human rights conventions although China has its own views on exactly what rights should be protected and to what degree. Although he may not have intended it to do so, Bredesen's description seems to imply that the human rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution should be universal which would be a very arrogant assumption. From talking to many Chinese people, especially college students (who tend to generally have more liberal views than older people), I've found that the Chinese have slightly different ideas about what rights are most important and the extent to which government should protect or restrict those rights.

"And fourth, we need to work hard to open more doors to China. I want more trade missions, and I especially want more Chinese students here and more American students to go to China. For the past century, America has been the higher education destination of choice in the world. After 9/11 and the massive visa restrictions that were put in place, Chinese students looked elsewhere. Places like Australia and parts of Europe are now where many of them go. We lost an invaluable franchise, and we need to regain it."

I absolutely agree with Phil on this one. Educational exchange programs should be expanded since this is one of the best way for young people from both countries to learn more about the other. The Chinese want to learn about America. When you visit China, you'll find Chinese people who want to talk to you to practice their English. Students I've met while teaching here at Lingnan University tend to be very inquisitive about the United States and I've heard some very perceptive non-critical comments from them about differences in culture which American students are not likely to be aware of since most know next to nothing about China and its culture. We need to do more to encourage interaction, exchange, learning and cooperation. The United States and China are likely to be the two most dominant nations of the 21st century and the more they can learn from each other and act cooperatively, the better off both (as well as the rest of the world) will be.